The disaster capitalists behind Eko Atlantic have seized on climate change to push through pro-corporate plans to build a city of their dreams, an architectural insult to the daily circumstances of ordinary Nigerians.
— Guardian

Martin Lukacs argues that Eko Atlantic, a new privatized city to be built near Lagos, Nigeria, is the perfect illustration of how the super-rich will exploit the crisis of climate change to increase inequality and seal themselves off from its impacts. View full entry »

In Makoko, a sprawling slum on the waterfront of Lagos, Nigeria, tens of thousands of people live in rickety wood houses teetering above the fetid lagoon. It’s an old fishing village on stilts, increasingly battered by floods from heavy rains and rising seas. Because the settlement was becoming dangerous, the government forcibly cleared part of it last year.
— NYT

Kunle Adeyemi, a Nigerian architect, had a better idea. He and his team asked what the community wanted, and with its help and money from the Heinrich Böll Foundation and the United Nations, he devised a floating school: a low-cost three-story A-frame, buoyed by about 250 plastic barrels... View full entry »

The Lagos state commissioner for housing, Adedeji Olatubosun Jeje, provided a different version of events.

“It’s a regeneration of a slum,” he said. “We gave enough notification. The government intends to develop 1,008 housing units. What we removed was just shanties.
— NYT

Adam Nossiter covers recent slum clearance efforts led by the governor of Lagos, Babatunde Fashola. As Lagos aims to become a premier business center, the city’s poor and homeless are becoming the government’s enemy. Last week, parts of Badia East (with perhaps... View full entry »

The Development Association for Renewable Energies (DARE) – an NGO based in Nigeria – is almost finished with an incredible two-bedroom bungalow entirely out of plastic bottles. Although many in Kaduna were dubious when the project began construction in June this year, the nearly-complete home is bullet and fireproof, earthquake resistant, and maintains a comfortable interior temperature of 64 degrees fahrenheit year round.
— Inhabitat